Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Vermont Law School to start buying out faculty next month

South Royalton — Vermont Law
School cut a dozen jobs earlier this week in a move telegraphed last
year, when the school offered voluntary buyouts to staff members in
light of declining admissions.

Of the 12 staff members that left, 10 accepted
buyouts, VLS spokeswoman Carol Westberg said. The other two people were
laid off. None of the affected workers were faculty members.

The buyouts, Westberg said, were originally
offered to staff in November, with a deadline of Jan. 3 to accept or
decline. While the 10 who took buyouts have worked out individualized
plans for when they will depart, the same can’t be said for the two who
were laid off.

“They’ve already left,” Westberg said, adding that the 12 affected staff members were notified on Monday.

Diane Hayes, the director of the school’s human
resources department, said that of the the workers who were laid off,
one position was cut from Buildings and Grounds and another was cut from
the Office for Institutional Advancement.

Both offices currently employ seven workers,
Hayes said. The latter office currently has a job opening, but Hayes
said the opening and the laid-off position are at different levels with
different duties.

According to President Marc Mihaly, those who
took the buyout offers received severance packages based on the length
of time they had worked at the school.

For the two who were laid off, Mihaly said, “we’ve sort of sweetened the sweet a pot a little” regarding payouts.

The downsizing comes as a result of fewer
applications over the past three years, VLS officials said, a problem
that exists for law schools nationwide as potential students, dissuaded
by a lack of open law jobs, don’t bother to apply.

Westberg said that about 200 students are set to
graduate with juris doctor degrees this spring. She said the school is
predicting between 150 and 170 students to enroll this coming fall.

“Essentially, law schools across the country
have to figure out how legal education is changing, and how to deal with
fewer applicants,” Westberg said.

Although the school’s faculty members haven’t
been affected yet, Mihaly said that a similar buyout program is in the
planning stages for professors.

That plan would have professors retain their
titles, but no longer be salaried, instead working on a part-time or
class-to-class basis.

“It’s really not a separation, as much as a change in status,” Mihaly said.

Those offers will be sent to faculty members in
early February, he said. He was unsure of the amount of full-time
positions that would need to be excised, saying that depended on next
year’s total enrollment.

“We just don’t know where we’re at yet,” he said. “We’ll know more mid-year.”

^ Agreed. Staff people are generally paid miserably. I'm looking forward to seeing you elitist academics on the next doc review circuit paying somewhere in the vicinity of $22 - $35 per hour with no benefits and no stability whatsoever. Only then will you people realize the consequences of your greedy ways.

Feel bad for the staff? Really? Staff salaries are also well above market. At least at my school, several of the "staff" members had JD's from the law school.

The person fired from "The Office for Institutional Advancement" sounds like a fundraiser. They are part of the bubble. Even the contractors on the second Death Star were liable. http://youtu.be/iQdDRrcAOjA

It's not about being happy about staff losing their jobs. It's the fact that this sort of thing is happening at exactly the same time some folks are ramping up the "law school is a versatile, smart investment" talk. The disconnect is starting to become more and more obvious.

Don't you just love this academic/corporate speak. Read between the lines suckers - your time is coming up. No more 6 hours working per week to get that 6 figure salary. If you end up working for me, please make sure to kiss my ring.

>>>>>“Essentially, law schools across the country have to figure out how legal education is changing, and how to deal with fewer applicants,” Westberg said.<<<<<

This sums up the dumcunt attitude of law schools in a nutshell. If they bothered to just LOWER THEIR COSTS, they would not have this problem! They would have more applicants than they could possibly deal with if they could just run their program for the same cost as a comparable MA program (which is all a JD is, for god's sake).

This is a case of the greed of law professors shining through. I bet that no law professor at that school took a paycut, but happily laid off those support workers (janitors? secretaries?)

Those fuckers are so greedy that they would rather rape the law school for two more years and see it collapse, rather than take a pay cut and have a job for the next twenty.

But that's Boomer attitude - I'll get mine for the next couple of years and then I'll retire, and fuck everyone behind me.

My god, I can't wait until those Boomer fuckers really do retire, then start to get too old, start to get sick. I cannot wait to fuck over every Boomer I possibly can. They WILL get theirs. Don't you worry. And there are millions like me, just waiting to stick it to the greedy fucking Boomers when the opportunity arises.

The greediest generation? Nah. The cuntiest generation is more appropriate for what those people have done to us.

I have to agree 100% with this poster. I'm sick to death of these academics talking about if we just get more clinics, you know make things more praktikal...if we just reduce law school from 3 years to 2 years ..... oooh that will help. If we just have the dean do a cross-country tour of every Amlaw250 firm across amerika and kiss their butt to hire our graduates, everything will get better. HOW ABOUT THIS SOLUTION YOU STUPID, SELF-ABSORBED, ELITIST ACADEMIC SCUMBAGS. Lower tuition, cut enrollment by 25-50% (more for scum sucking schools like Georgetown that have 600 student class sizes). Shut down crap holes like Cooley. Reduce professor salaries. Make professors teach more. Reduce the number of faculty members. Quit kissing the ass of China and the rest of the world at the expense of American students re: the overabundance of "worthless" LLM programs. Use generic toilet paper in your facilities instead of Charmin. Are you getting the picture you self-interested jerks? No clinic in immigration law and foreclosures is going to improve a graduates chances of a job. It's a simple supply and demand phenomenon. Fewer graduates = more prosperity. Now go talk about Pennoyer v. Neff in your fake English accent you blow hards.

BEAUTIFUL!! Let's make sure to keep documenting the law school scam. I have no intention of taking the law school pigs off the meat hook. This is wonderful news. Where are the waterhead shills who told us that we were fighting a losing battle now?!

With this collective effort, we have managed to put the swine on the ropes. Now, we need to make sure to put their face and ass in the dirt.

Most stand-alone law schools like VLS have small endowments and not much in the way of cash reserves, as they spend close to 100% of their income each year, the vast majority of which (90%+) is in the form of tuition.

They also have very high fixed costs relative to costs that can be treated flexibly. (Faculty salaries being the main item in the former category).

Furthermore there's no central university to float them if they start running in the red. Each school will have contractual rules in regard to which faculty get cut first if the school's payroll can't be met. This will mean firing untenured faculty first, but that approach is very inefficient, as it means getting rid of young active cheap people rather than old inert expensive people. So step one is to try to buy out some of the latter.

You should send every professor a Christmas card that got fired from your school. You can tell them to use all that great career advice they gave you when you had them as a professor. It also would hurt to wish them well on their next document review project.

Environmentalists claim to be interested in "sustainability", yet they couldn't figure out that charging 135k to qualify one for a low-paying enviornmental or public interest job (if one was lucky) wasn't "sustainable".

Holy dogshit - VLS has the BEST environmental law program in the nation. WOW!!! And I have the most purplest of nurples in the nation. I guess that qualifies me for a prize does it not? In all seriousness, I know 2 VLS grads. One 2006 grad never found a job and is trying to find a paralegal position. The other is a 2009 grad woman I work with in an in house position and she is lucky as hell to even have that job. Too much money. Bad weather. No connections in nowheresville VT - seriously if you have ever been to No. Royalton - it's a one horse town - pretty but it ain't going to help you get a job when you graduate. Avoid this school at all costs.

@6:22. LOL, yeah the closest a VLS grad will get to environmental law is working on a doc review involving a septic tank company's negligence. I hope you VLS grads like excrement. In fact I know you do, as your school spent an inordinate amount of your tuition money on waterless toilets throughout campus. Now you know where your $45,000 in tuition goes. Sniff the vapors. But please, try not to light a match.

Environmental law, like international law, is one of those fields of law which crappy schools advertise they specialize in because they sound more glamorous than the extremely mundane legal jobs their graduates can expect (those who can find legal work that is).

But as LawProf pointed out, these sorts of jobs don't exist for graduates from these schools. Truth is these jobs are extremely rare, highly sought after, often unpaid and only available to graduates from the best schools.

True to an extent. I graduated from the #2 environmental law school in 09 and there were 5 to 10 people who got what I think everyone would calll pretty good environmental jobs, mostly with the Feds. Slim odds and they were definitely committed and talented folks, but not impossible.

But somehow I get the feeling that even if all of the higher priced salaries of the tenured faculty and key administrators were halved, the savings would still not make up for the big hit that is taken by a decline in enrollment. (An interesting case study for a class in business.)

So how to further cut costs? By leasing or putting some of the physical campus in mothballs for a few years?

Converting from oil to gas or solar heat?

Because from the commentary it seems that if a school is "starved out" over a relatively short term of a few years, it won't be able to revive itself again?

A lot of schools will flat-out close - there is not enough demand to support any level of fixed cost.

Otherwise:

Salary freezes,Hiring freezes,Increasing teaching loads significantly,Eliminating any funding for research/conferences/sabbaticals, etc. - if you want that, you get outside funding, or pay for it out of your pocket,Firing half the administrators (no tenure for them),Rolling back posted tuition - not just offering a lot of "scholarships" to hide tuition discounts.

It will take a few dead law schools to motivate the others to make significant changes.

Again, the vast majority of foreign LLMs cannot find jobs after graduation - their situation is worse than that of the average JD graduate, especially because staying on to find work is much more difficult due to living cost/visa/language considerations.

Basically, the only reason a US firm is going to hire a foreign LLM over a JD is if they have a special interest in doing business with their country of origin. Unsurprisingly, your average PI firm has no interest in working with people doing business in China/Europe/wherever, and many other areas are similarly unlikely to favour foreign LLMs. Even in IP, which is a fairly international business where foreign languages are an advantage, you're unlikely to get hired if you have a strong foreign accent.

Basically, stop hating on foreigners. The scam is even harder on them.

The tide is turning and the levees are starting to break. I cannot wait until these unemployed law professors flock to the profession they eschewed for safer pastures. As a hungry tiger, I cannot wait to pounce on these declawed and neutered cats when they attempt to bring their scholarshit to a court near me. Looks like I won't have to wait much longer.

So...with trimming of the herd, surely this means the faculty will vastly improve in overall quality, just like the applicant got better once the fat got trimmed and the "people who didn't want to be in law school" left.

Thankfully, these faculty members can just go back to working in Ropes and Gray's Montpellier office if they don't like the new conditions.

If you had any doubts about attending Vermont Law School, the very real chance that it will shut down (it must be serious, if the dean tells the press about impending faculty cuts) should send you running. You've got to be crazy to pay (or borrow) another dime in order to go there. The only thing worse than a degree from VLS is if it closes its doors beforehand. . . .

A little birdie tells me a certain Midwest private made cuts similar to VLS this past summer. Even went so far as to institute furloughs for all staff and faculty up to ten days. But unlike Vermont, they were self-interestedly wise enough not to inform to the local media. Whether they know it or not, VLS just very publicly announced their own impending death spiral.

Ironic isn't it? Who would have thought that the invulnerable law schools would ever be vulnerable to any kind of a "risk".

They had all the angles covered and under control, right down to the nondischargeability of outrageous tuition debt; they had it all figured out except for the one variable that they couldn't predict or control: a decline in enrollment.

But stand alone law schools aside, I seem to recall reading that a law school is often the most profitable branch or cash cow of an overall University, and that the revenues the law school generates is a boon to the U in general.

Ironically the student loan money is still available, but much to the chagrin of the law school cartel, it looks like fewer people will voluntarily want to avail themselves of it because, in the words of the Judge, they are becoming "sophisticated consumers" :)

The hard-core, you-can-take-my-student-loan-profits-when-you-pry-them-from-my-cold-dead-hands TJSL and NELS's of the world will just keep cutting entrance requirements and jacking up tuition. It's a cutthroat business, after all...

^Actually, I wouldn't be surprised to see strategic mergers start to take place. When enrollments in neighboring schools decline, consolidation is often the no-brainer choice to cut costs while preserving tradition and preventing the losses that accompany full closure. It's a super-convenient way for two schools to slash personnel costs at the same time.

I'd look for law schools and parent universities to start merging/entering sharing agreements where it's feasible. My best guess is for stand-a-lones to look for larger systems to align with.

Dean Burnett should be in deep trouble for those statements. They are seriously very stupid. Either he believes them, in which case he probably isn't fit to hold his position. Or he's trying to fool the state legislature, in which case he's dishonorable.

Of course I was being naive, Dean Burnett doesn't give a crap about honor, or about the future of his students, just about padding his school's income stream (and hence his own) by tapping into that sweet, sweet federal tuition loan gusher.

But his statements are incredibly stupid. He says, basically, that out-of-state trained lawyers are flooding into Idaho. Therefore Idaho must have a shortage of lawyer jobs (Idaho is special). So U of Idaho must increase the number of lawyer it trains, because Idaho law is so very different from the rest of the country only lawyers trained there can properly understand them.

And then something about how even if his school is contributing to an oversupply of lawyers, at least his graduates won't have nearly, quite, a high a debt load as some other law graduates.

I just went over to Law School Tuition Bubble and looked at their law student over production table.http://lawschooltuitionbubble.wordpress.com/original-research-updated/law-graduate-overproduction/

Vermont (1) 60 191 131 3.18

State, law school, number of open positions, excess capacity, and ratio.

I'd suggest that since no-one moves to Vermont for the weather, or to ski their way through law school, and that the job market was so obviously saturated, that VLS had a much tougher time locally recruiting suckers then other law schools in more desirable locations.

The history of Vermont is mostly about people who were born there and rose to prominence elsewhere. The two most famous lawyers born in Vermont, Chester Arthur and Calvin Coolidge, left the state, practiced law in New York and Massachusetts, respectively, and rose through the political ranks to the White House.

200 new lawyers in Vermont every year would translate into about one new lawyer for every 3,100 people, and a population of 3,100 probably couldn't sustain one existing lawyer. Over fifteen years 3,100 people would have to absorb 3,000 new lawyers.

I still have a solicitation email that these fuckers sent me almost a decade ago:

"...In addition to our internationally renowned Environmental Law Program, we offer excellent classroom and experiential opportunities through our Public Interest Program, the General Practice Program and International Program - all built upon the foundation of our well balanced general curriculum. Our campus is nestled in the magnificent Green Mountains of Vermont, yet we provide numerous internships all over the country - from Boston to Washington, D.C. to San Francisco...."

I interviewed at Vermont Law School for a faculty position a few years ago. I left with a sense that it had the most unproductive senior faculty I had ever seen. Untenured faculty had their noses to the grindstone, but much of the tenured faculty were another story.

My cousins grew up in Vermont and I have visited the state dozens of times throughout my life. It’s a nice place to go skiing on weekends or to check out the foliage in the fall. But it’s a very tough place to make a living. Even in good times, there just isn’t much in the way of economic opportunity for anyone - least of all an attorney. And its not like VLS grads are going to be snapped up by the legal job markets in Boston or NY. Its absurd that this place has been pumping out 200 JD’s every year.

Vermont may as well be considered part of the Boston legal market as far as jobs are concerned. One of my friends from a Boston law school clerked in the Northern part of Vermont, though she had never even been to Vermont and certainly did not take the bar there. She was so set on clerking after graduation that she went to almost-Canada Vermont for a state trial court clerkship. Other clerks in her program were from out-of-state schools; one from a certain highly ranked mid-west school moved to Vermont to clerk in one of the special environmental courts there. So, if you are going to VLS, don't assume that you can stay local for a job in a market that is built around VLS. You will be competing with students from other states, especially Massachusetts.

I met a bartender in NYC once who was dead set on VT law for "environmental law." She had no connection to Vermont and when I asked her what jobs there were in environmental law she said something to the effect of "like, for the government or for an organization or something."

Any idea what a faculty buyout will do to their USNWR faculty rep score?

That's very common, and very sad. Law schools are marketers. She was marketed to. US News and other seemingly reliable sources comes up with "specialty" rankings that these schools trot out. Naive bartenders everywhere assume that law school specialties (and specialty rankings) mean something to someone, and they bite -- hook, line and sinker.

I don't know how those responsible sleep at night. Either they're too scared to say something, or too oblivious, or too full of their own manure.

I imagine it would cause grumbling among the remaining faculty over the several extra hours of work per week they'd now have to do. Those poor, poor professors. Additionally, the student/teacher ratio will go probably going up, lowering their USNWR ranking further.

There are a couple of TLS threads on a Syracuse specialty program on national security law that 0Ls think will fast-track them for a job with the FBI. Notice that nobody is even attempting to defend the placement rates of the actual program.

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=202802

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=148120

Like international law and constitutional law, there are probably more entry-level jobs for "national security" law professors than there are for "national security" lawyers.

Oddly, Vermont Law School hasn't mentioned the layoffs on their web site.

I mean, why wouldn't you drop 135K in tuition to study things like this:

"The Center for Agriculture and Food Systems (CAFS) has a dual mission: to develop the next generation of sustainable food and agriculture law and policy leaders while providing legal and policy resources and solutions for citizens to build and support such systems. CAFS' approach to progressing sustainable agriculture and food systems is systems-based, as our name implies. We believe that in order to truly foster sustainable agriculture and food, we need to understand the connections these systems have to the environment, energy, human and animal health, labor, and climate change."

Vermont's Environmental Law center:

"Everyone who experiences the ELC’s offerings leaves with a heightened sense of civic responsibility and a deeper understanding of the issues"

A lot of college students get zero guidance. It's not like undergraduate profs know anything, as they live in a bubble too.

So it's easy to see how this happens. A student (maybe even a good student) thinks, "I care about the environment, and I want to work to do something. I have respect for our laws, and public policy, and I'm going to make a difference." Or, "I'm interested in foreign affairs, and I want to get involved in public policy. There is genocide in Africa, the Balkans, Cambodia, etc. and I want to stop it and I want to work for the rights of x, y, z oppressed minority group."

They look around, and think that law is the way to get from Point A to Point B. And you have a sinister law school carnival barker touting its environmental law or international human rights program. They take the bait. And 3.5 years later they are very, very pissed off and realize they've been duped.

They really haven't been duped. They've been marketed too. Sold a product that seems valuable on the path from Point A to Point B, but instead, it's like a shitty jungle survival multitool sold to a would-be explorer, or a portable sluice box to a Klondike miner. Kids, you've been sold equipment that's sort of related to the adventure that you want, but it is of no practical use on your path from Point A to Point B and it is exceedingly expensive.

Yes, this is what makes the higher education scam so insidious. They are taking advantage of students who are well-meaning, doing the socially responsible thing and educating themselves.

It's not like we were greedy or behaving sinfully. We were only doing what we were told our whole lives was the right thing. So our elders tell us that education is a virtue, and then fleece us when we pursue that virtue.

It's the ultimate bait-and-switch. College is called an "opportunity," until the student loan bill comes due, at which point they clarify that it was actually a "calculated risk".

Seriously, in what rational universe is "a heightened sense of civic responsiblity and a deeper understanding of the issues" remotely valued at $150k? Answer: NONE, except the boomer bubble universe that deans and profs reside in where there are no money problems and everyone owns two homes and sends their kids to private school (no offense, Mr. Campos).

"Here is your heightened sense of responsiblity and deeper understanding. That will be $150k, please."

Constitutionaldaily.com also notes that Vermont has been ramping up the "scholarship" tuition discounts ("awards" of half to full tuition have gone up from 4.5% of the class three years ago to 24.6% of the class now). With the reduction in class sizes, even given some increase in stated tuition, the school's revenues have to be off by at least a third.

Death spiral time...

Interestingly, even three years ago, 62.9% of the class got some "scholarship" award, even if most of them were for relatively small amounts - so you win the rube award if you were in the third of the class paying full freight.

Now, 33.3% of the class is still paying full freight. Can I get a mailing list with their names on it - there are a number of things I would like to market to them...

Someday soon a book will be written about how law schools and their greed caused their own destruction.

Even in the face of overwhelming evidence that they cannot continue with business as usual, no law school has come up with a plan that reflects the oversupply of attorneys and the lack of employment.

Only barefaced lies in employment stats and salaries kept schools in business this long. Now that model is disappearing, even though the scam has just begun to be exposed. What will happen when all applicants really understand the reality of the cost vs. benefit of a JD?

They never will go out of business. There always will be at least 50,000 suckers with a political "science" degree who want to be the next Alan Shore. I predict the suckers will soon be taking of 500,000.00 in private loans to get a JD degree. (Do not forget - it is extremely versatile degree). What else these losers can do with those worthless soft arts degrees? Do not get too exited just because one stand alone skool is in dire straits. If everything fails, the law skools, like big tobacco companies, will go after different ethnic groups to recruit more suckers. As long as suckers enroll to get political "science" degrees and the like, there always will be more than enough targets for law skools.

"What else these losers can do with those worthless soft arts degrees?"

The worthless soft arts degrees are next. Leiter says that free-standing law schools (like Vermont) are most likely to close. That may be true, but it's not as if most universities can afford to bail out their law schools forever.

Law schools are just the canary in the coal mine - but there is going to be a massive disintermediation of higher ed (particularly in soft subjects) generally.

Take our friends at Santa Clara - yeah, the law school charges $43,680, but undergraduate tuition is $40,572.

How much better are the employment incomes for SCU undergraduates with soft degrees - maybe better than the law students, but not a whole lot better.

Fun fact: at current tuition rates, to go to Santa Clara undergraduate for four years and Santa Clara law school for three years would cost $293,328 in tuition. I don't think either side of that value equation is sustainable - I don't think that the undergraduate program will be in a position to subsidize the law school for very long.

"Someday soon a book will be written about how law schools and their greed caused their own destruction."

I continue to be amazed at this. I did not realize when began applying to law school back in '07 just how much of a sweetheart deal the law schools were running. I really only learned once I was well entrenched and a year and half into the process of getting a "legal education" (love that phrase). They had one of the greatest things going, and they just couldn't help themselves. It was as if they had a giant ATM just pumping out money. Greed, hubris, etc., killed it. Amazing.

All environmental law/"civic responsibility" bs aside, a typical VLS grad would, more likely than not, have to try to hang out a shingle in one of the small rural towns within that state. Definitely a tough row to hoe. Even assuming that this VLS grad makes it within said small town, how much can he or she really expect to make? $50-60k after expenses? Maybe?

And that's certainly nothing to scoff at. It's an honest living, and these small towns certainly need a small number of attorneys for divorce, probate, real estate closings, etc.

But how can this grad possibly service the debt they accumulated at VLS? They can't, and that's reality. Sorry VLS, you are charging about 4x as much as your product is worth. If you can't figure out a way to make it on about 1/4 of what you are currently spending, you're not going to make it. Just like your grads. Welcome to reality.

"Basics first: we look at grammar, punctuation, and writing style. Has this essay been proofread? Is our school name correct? Vermont Law School is not affiliated with the University of Vermont. Our essay topics ask very specific questions: 1. What are your goals and how do the programs at Vermont Law School help you to meet them? 2. How have you affected change?"

Perhaps they are using "affected" in the sense of feigning. I suspect, however, that they meant "effected", despite their vaunted concern with the basics of correct writing.

"Vermont Law School embodies a commitment to service, thus our motto "Law for the community and the world." Whether a student is committed to environmental issues, international human rights, or local community legal services, we have programs, internships, and service activities in place. This is a campus for advocates."

LOL. Have you noticed that the worse the actual outcomes for law students, the more professors and schools stress "advocacy", and emphasize how gosh-darn moral and wonderful they are?

To quote the New Englander Ralph Waldo Emerson:

"The louder he proclaimed his honor the faster we counted the spoons."

It would seem to me that schools with low endowments should be avoided because they are likely to need to cut the most, if not close, in this market downturn. Cooley Law School does very poorly with a 18M endowment (750 out of 839, one of the smallest in the nation). Any others? Vermont does not seem to be listed. Any idea why?

Looks like bond liabilities increased by 33%. They show a slight loss for that year with grants (~7.5m) at about 1/4 the level of tuition receipts (30m). Very little in additional contributions (govt or private), total net assets around 26m.

If they had any increase in bond obligations since then, they'd be screwed given the declining gross receipts and limited external funding sources.

In contrast, NYLS made 84M in tuition and gave back only 8M in grants. And William Mitchell, a school that isn't as cash cow-like as NYLS, had half the bond liabilities and double the donations.

If you want to know who will close first, look no further than balance sheets.

To understand the impact of endowments you need to segregate a University or college's main endowment and the dedicated endowment of the law school (unless it is stand alone.) Universities and colleges want to grow the main endowment and can decide whether or not to spend any of it supporting the law school - only the law school's own endowment is available to it to spend.

Re: 6:45 a.m.: Ok, it's true that college students don't get any guidance, I didn't get any guidance either (in fact the only guidance I got was from a prof telling me NOT to go to law school because all lawyers are miserable), but I still knew which schools were considered high-ranked, and which ones no one had ever heard of. I knew about US News. I think it's kind of a leap to say that someone bears no responsibility because they were lured in by Vermont Law School's amazing brochure about environmental law - come on, everyone knows that's a crap school.

I'm not excusing the law schools at all, as they are predatory scam machines that ought to be shut down, but there should also be some responsibility taken by people with college degrees who took a blind gamble on schools like that.

There are a lot of people that are naive about law. Just the fact that this marketing works proves they are naive.

Some people truly don't understand that a JD is not like an MD. I recall a girl from San Francisco who thought she should stay home and go to Golden Gate instead of Michigan. Her family thought that a JD was the same from wherever she went. She actually argued this point for a while. She was finally convinced after excerpts from the New York Times article about the predatory scholarship scam run by Golden Gate with the comments from their dean.

I bet most of the people who went to Vermont who are not from there are special snowflakes.

Does anyone actually have a recent and complete list by law school of dedicated endowments. Brian Leiter published a top ten a few years back - which ran from Harvard Law at $926 million to Vanderbilt at $78 million - but this was data he points out from 2000.

The size of the dedicated endowment of a law school is a crucial issue in how long a school can hold out - how long before it burns through the money - though if the school has incurred debt to build a shiny new facility it may be trickier.

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